


Shooting at Seagulls

by menocchio



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Injury Recovery, M/M, Margate, Pre-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:28:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23247772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/menocchio/pseuds/menocchio
Summary: Eventually one or both of them is going to get his shit together, and then they'll be in real trouble.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby/Alfie Solomons
Comments: 11
Kudos: 73





	Shooting at Seagulls

Someone has given Alfie a gun, and he is pointing it at the seagull hopping along the sand ten feet in front of them.

He can tell his aim is off – his bad eye, it's unavoidable. He steps in close and folds his hand around his on the gun. Alfie's shoulder pressed in, sheltering against his chest. Alfie's head is cocked like he is listening hard to the sound of the waves. His expression is intent. Eyes narrowed, the milky bad one only pretending.

Breathe with me, he doesn't say, and he corrects the gun until the sight is true.

Three, two, one. Say it with me, Alfie. Bang.

* * *

It is a mild day. The countryside around the estate is so sedate and unchanging it feels enormous, like any moment it might give a whistle and crack open, rain dirt and severed limbs down upon him, so he decides to stay inside.

He's been trying to read the newspaper for ten minutes or an hour when he gives up and turns to the small plain envelope on his study desk. It had arrived at the door with no address, which usually means someone somewhere is threatening his life. He saves these types of letters for after lunch, usually, but today he isn't eating lunch so there is no excuse for putting it off. He picks up his letter opener and neatly slits the paper.

The letter is short and to the point. He reads it three times before understanding what it is trying to say and then, with a bloom of rage so immediate it feels cleansing, he collects his gun and coat.

The thing about landmines is, even after seeing men blown apart, you always secretly thinks it'd be different for you, that you could somehow get to safety in time – if you were to jump fast enough, high enough, perhaps it won't go for you the way it went for the others.

His steps echo on floor, calling forth Charlie from the depths of the house. He jumps along Tommy's path all down the hall to the drive, hands grasping for his, high excited voice asking to come along. He's been more affectionate with Tommy around all the time; he thinks he has a proper father now. Tommy tries to answer but his voice is no stronger than a ghost's, and he leaves the boy standing in the doorway: hands falling to his sides, expression going still and watchful as he watches his father drive away from him.

The voice in the letter was hard to parse. That meant it couldn't be Alfie Solomons, not least because Alfie Solomons is dead, but because even dead the man wouldn't limit himself to so sparing a missive. So the writer intended to fuck with him. But who would try to fuck with him, and in this particular manner, but Alfie Solomons?

The letter's audacity was better proof than its contents.

* * *

It takes hours to do the drive, hours that pass like the dark, unchanging days in the tunnels, and then he's smelling the sea air and hearing the cries of the seabirds and it all looks the same as that day a few months ago.

He half starts towards the spot on the beach where they'd stood, like he might check for a body that would have long been picked over by those same birds that wheel and dive over the beach now. The wind off the waves snatches the sound of his own breathing from his ears. He turns from the beach and looks at the small unassuming town sat down beside the sea.

He's still not sure this isn't the latest spirit conjured up by his poisoned brain. He can't imagine Alfie Solomons here, alive. It is easier to know him dead, and dead at Tommy's own hand, than to picture him living out days in this quiet place.

Fucking Margate.

* * *

He finds the little hospital and in it the little man who claims to be treating the stranger found on the beach.

They take him down a long empty corridor that gleams and is capped with a man contorted on a cross, agony in his expression. Some liked their god to suffer.

His pulse is slow now, his hands steady; already he feels like he is in another fight for his life and that's fine because at least he knows where he stands (in the corridor of the hospital, before the man suffering on the cross).

“We'd prefer you didn't smoke in here,” the doctor tells him.

He thanks him and lights the cigarette while he watches. The doctor's expression doesn't change. Doctors in seaside hospitals in Kent have never learned fear. It's not a problem, but it might be someday.

He steps into the patient's room, and a half-ruined face turns to him.

Alfie.

Hello. Are you here about the window? Been after them about the window.

Is it a scheme, a joke? He walks over to the large window and looks out to the rolling coastline. The hospital is set back enough to be safe from storm surge. It has a large patio fronting the beach. The window appears to be fine.

There's nothing wrong with the window.

Alfie's expression twists. It won't open.

He turns and looks back to the doctor, who is waiting in the doorway, waiting for someone to reveal something. This man doesn't know either of them. He has probably never imagined himself to be in danger, not here in Margate.

“The windows on this floor are latched,” the doctor says. “It's for patients' safety.”

Fucking unreasonable, mate. Alfie doesn't react as if it's the first time he has heard this rule.

He can't stand being in the room any longer. Not looking at the man on the bed, he crosses the floor and brushes past the doctor.

“What's wrong with him?” he asks after. He wrote me a letter and now he doesn't recognize me. It had to be a scheme.

“His condition varies in severity. The healing is not complete – he is still on a lot of medication,” says the doctor. “He has his good days, he has his bad.”

“And this, this is a bad day?”

The doctor considers the question. “Depends on how much he values his memories, I suppose.”

It's the last time Tommy visits sober for seven months.

* * *

The drive is always long and it is always bad, and sometimes he doesn't know he is making it until he passes the little sign for Chatham. He thinks he means to be going to London, but he doesn't stop and then he'll be in Margate.

Salt breeze, sea birds. Occasionally a man with half a face who recognizes him half the time. Margate is Rome and Alfie Solomons is its mad emperor who expects loyalty from the man who tried to kill him just the other day. What's a little murder between friends?

Eventually one or both of them is going to get his shit together, and then they'll be in real trouble.

* * *

Occasionally, very occasionally, his good days and Alfie's good days align, and they walk along the beach like old friends. Old friends who find a sandy dune protected by long grasses and do the sorts of things bad people do.

Alfie's tongue is still clever and his hands still strong. Sometimes he'll lose Tommy half way through but he always finishes. And if he becomes alarmed or loses his temper and lashes out, well, Tommy is still nimble enough to jump away. Wiping mouth, breathing rough. Still hard, still wanting this man who now claims he doesn't know him.

The worst of it is when he has a bad day and Alfie's almost like his old self. He finds Tommy's wretchedness amusing, or he pretends to, but then he'll get serious and he'll get close. He'll grip Tommy's opium-limp head and lift it and make him stare into his bad eye, where he swears he keeps all his secrets, every wicked act he has ever perpetrated on this green earth.

I seen you, Tommy. You and a great black horse standing in a field, and you with a gun.

I know, I know, you've said.

And you say goodbye –

You've said, Alfie. He doesn't like to think about his horse; he can too easily picture it.

But I haven't told you what you do next, Tom. After you do in the fucking horse.

He is sweating through his vest and shirt. He has mislaid his cigarettes; he turns his face with difficulty from Alfie. He sits up against the plain white-washed wall of Alfie's room and fetches about the floor for his case. He fumbles it open, he strikes, he lights – everything is more manageable now.

What do I do next, Alfie.

Bang.

* * *

The doctor doesn't like him visiting.

“He's remembering more,” he says. “Every time I am here, he remembers more.”

“Your presence makes my patient more erratic. He says the most outlandish things to the nurses.”

It bubbles out of him like a surprise, the shock eruption of the century. He can't remember the last time he laughed.

“That's just Alfie. Doctor, that's your patient.”

* * *

Someone has given Alfie a gun, and he is pointing it at the seagull hopping along the sand ten feet in front of them. He folds a hand over his and helps him aim, but Alfie shrugs him roughly away, his wrist knocking his in a bid to be free.

The sea air slips between their bodies like a wedge.

Fucking hell, Tommy, the point is not to actually shoot the seagull. What's wrong with you? You need to get right, mate. You need to get yourself right.

He repeats it to himself later as he drives away, mouth shaping the words slowly like they're an unfamiliar prayer.

Behind him, Margate. Salt breeze and sea birds and a man who can hold him down. Ahead: dunno. Maybe he'll run for Parliament. If he jumps fast enough, high enough....


End file.
